


Think Of Me

by megyal



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-23
Updated: 2006-10-23
Packaged: 2017-10-27 04:44:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/291750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megyal/pseuds/megyal





	Think Of Me

When the time came for Pete to let Patrick go, back to Chi-town, he found he couldn't do so immediately. He held Patrick in a bear hug, trying not to seem as if he was trying to absorb Patrick's light smell, and really trying not to feel abandoned.

"Pete? What the... _Pete_ ," Patrick said, laughing a little, pulling away and turning his head to gaze at the flight display. He looked again in Pete's glum face and smiled, scrunching his nose so that his glasses rode back up. "Dude. It's just, you know, for a week. I'll be back to keep you out of trouble, bitch."

"Promise?" Pete whispered, regressing without shame. Twenty-seven, twenty-six, eighteen, thirteen, ten, four years old. Just a lonely kid in a lonely town. To his credit, Patrick didn't roll his eyes. Much.

"Promise. Can you let me go? Please? I have a plane to catch."

Pete released him, and felt the space between his arms grow too wide, eons apart. Patrick reached down and grabbed his bag and guitar-case. He shot Pete a careless grin, but before he could speed away, Pete spoke up.

"Think of me."

Patrick stopped and looked back at him, frowning slightly. Pete could see the question in his eyes, and behind that, a sort of hesitance. Pete reached up and ran a hand through his hair, looked at a mother nearby trying to placate a wailing toddler, stuck a hand in his pocket, anything not to see the uncertainty run through Patrick's normally placid face. He felt more than saw Patrick take one step away from him, and felt his whole chest fold painfully in on itself, and knew that a heart didn't break as much as it was strangled to death.

Patrick was typically comforting, though. "I'll try," he said.

*

He didn't call Patrick at all that night, even though he knew that the flight had landed okay, and Patrick's mom had come to pick him up.

"Hey," Patrick said when he called Pete's cell two days after. Pete had been buried in bed, underneath a mountain of thick covers with the air conditioning set on high. Hemmy had burrowed further to end up at his feet. He was wearing a pair of black socks he stole from Patrick. "You're in bed. Get out and do something."

"I'm doing something."

"You're moping. Go see a movie with...that girl? I forgot her name."

Pete pursed his lips, blowing air into the phone receiver. There _was_ no girl, he wanted to say. But he simply grabbed the remote and turned up the television to an unrighteous volume.

"I'm already watching a movie. The Phantom...makes me weep like a baby, dude."

There was a strangely tense silence, and Pete felt as if the whole world stood still, waiting for a dawn that would never come. He felt compelled to talk, for he considered words to be his fortress, his castle, and he was at his strongest there. Maybe.

"My favorite part's coming up, where she sings that pretty song? Listen...."

Christine Daae began her haunting verse, and Pete was singing it softly with her underneath his breath. _Remember me, once in a while...please, promise me, you'll try..._

He didn't have the Voice, the one Patrick used to dissolve bones and set flesh afire, but he thought he was doing pretty well. He reached the part where Christine made her debut at the Gala, and without warning he felt his voice falter, shudder over the words, his castle and fortress crumbling under Patrick's silence.

Christine kept singing, and he could hear Patrick's breathing, steady and mellow in comparison to his harsh uncontrolled gasps. Pete was considering just hanging up the phone, cutting off this tenuous link that existed between them, because there was no way that Patrick was going to-

In the middle of his misery, Patrick began to say something.

Not really.

He began to sing, one perfect octave below Christine.

" _Imagine me, trying too hard to put you from my mind...,_ " and here he made a considering pause, and Pete felt himself go boneless beneath his covers. Christine sang slowly, and Patrick caught up again, pushing her out of Pete's whole awareness with frightening ease.". _..there will never be a day, when I won't think of you..._ "

Pete turned down the television and knuckled his eyes. He wasn't crying.

"You know those words," he tried jokingly, but it came out in a strangled voice.

"I've watched that movie like a million times with you, Pete," Patrick replied, almost too gently. Pete couldn't take the kindness. He forged ahead.

"I wish that was true." He rubbed his feet against Hemmy, who licked Patrick's socks. Two hours ahead of him, Patrick was quiet again. "What you sang. I'm sorry it's not."

He wasn't. Crying.

Fuck no.

"Don't be, Pete. Get out of bed. Go do something. Cause, you know. It's true. Okay?"

"Promise?" Pete whispered, but he didn't go back, not this time. He felt stable. Grounded.

"I'll be there soon," Patrick soothed. "Think of me."


End file.
